Massive search for missing woman proves fruitless

Friday

Jun 22, 2007 at 12:01 AMJun 22, 2007 at 9:02 PM

More than 1,800 volunteers turned out Thursday to search for Jessie Davis, the 26-year-old Lake Township woman missing since last week.

More than 1,800 volunteers turned out Thursday to search for Jessie Davis, the 26-year-old Lake Township woman missing since last week.
Tim Miller, founder of EquuSearch, the Houston-based organization that organized the search, said that of the 700 searches his team has been on, only two rivaled the turnout in the effort to find Jessie.
“It’s overwhelming and almost out of control,” Miller said before the search began, but he was confident his organization would gain control of the situation.
The throng was divided into teams of 100, and around noon, the biggest news of the day -- a clump of freshly turned dirt -- came out of team four.
In a rolling wasteland of tall grasses and trees, Christopher Stump came upon a set of fresh-looking four-wheeler tracks that led up a hill and stopped abruptly.
“They pretty much went nowhere,” said Stump, 35, of Greentown. “They just ended.”
The brush was down in the area where the tracks stopped, Stump said, and there were two types of fresh dirt on the ground, covering an area about 6 feet long and 3 feet wide.
“It looked like a big grave,” Stump said.
Shortly after Stump’s discovery, Sgt. Eric East of the Springfield Police Department could be heard requesting cadaver dogs.
About 15 minutes later, East led a group of five handlers and their dogs to the spot, about 150 yards down a rough lane from Highland Park Avenue NW.
Members of the search party and media assembled at the top of a bluff, an area where the investigation of the plot couldn’t be viewed, and waited quietly until after 1 p.m., when police cordoned off the area.
The FBI and area law enforcement agencies searched the area and eventually closed off Highland Park Avenue from Pleasantwood Avenue NW to Aultman Avenue NW. Shortly after 7 p.m. Thursday, the Stark County Sheriff’s Department said that the patch of freshly turned dirt turned out to be a marijuana patch.
Stump said with the size of the plot of freshly turned over soil and its proximity to Davis’ home -- less than one mile -- he couldn’t help but think there was a body there.
“But it’s good news, what they found,” he said.
In the same area where Stump came upon the fresh dirt, three siblings marked a spot where they’d discovered two green rugs that were discarded along a muddy trail.
“I remember that kid said, ‘Mommy’s in the rug,’ ” 10-year old Zak King said, referring to comments Davis’ 2-year-old son, Blake, made since the disappearance of his mother.
“We looked at this rug to see if there was a bleach spot, like they said in the news,” King’s sister Brianna Smith, 13, said.
Thirty minutes before Stump’s find became the focal point of the day, James Chester and his shaved head emerged into the sunshine from a dense wooded area off Highland Park Avenue NW and announced that he hadn’t found anything suspicious.
“A lot of brush back there,” Chester said. “Nothing unusual going on back there. No clothing, no purse. Nothing unusual at all.”
Chester was compelled to join the search. He lost his oldest son in 1999 and can relate to the anguish Davis’ family must be feeling. Also he’s known Bobby Cutts Jr. since Cutts was a little boy. Cutts is the father of Davis’ son Blake, and Davis’ family said he is the father of the unborn child Davis is carrying.
Authorities have searched Cutts’ home on three occasions since Davis was reported missing.
Chester’s son and Cutts grew up together, played football together at GlenOak High School.
“He’s a good kid. When I heard (that Cutts was a suspect), I thought, ‘Oh, my, God,’” Chester said. “You expect the worst until you find out different. Bobby’s a good guy, and I hope he didn’t do anything like this.
“I’ve known Bobby all his life. I know his mom, his dad, his grandmother, his grandfather. He came to my house a lot of times. Unfortunately, this is reality; I hope he’s innocent. I wanted to come out today and find out for myself what’s going on.
“I came out first of all to find this young lady and also to find out what’s going on with Bobby. But first of all, for that young girl.”